Ok, that was a bit short, but it’s true. The Copenhagen conference is an irrelevance, unless you are one of those kinds of people who like watching thousands of politicians rub shoulders and exchange platitudes, after which they attend a variety of meetings out of which will come precisely nothing that will have the slightest bearing on the future of the planet.

So here’s my promise:

If a watertight deal comes out of the two week conference that promises at least a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (including deforestation), based on 1990 levels, by 2015; and a net global reduction, again on 1990 levels, of at least 60% by 2030 — then, and only then, will I shut down The Unsuitablog.

These figures are not just finger-in-the-air stuff; they are derived from the work of some of the finest climate scientists working today — those that care about the quality of their work rather than whatever funding they might receive from Corporation X. Funnily enough, it’s just those figures that will spell the end of the Industrial Machine because, except through some fundamental change in the entire global system of energy production and resource consumption, these cuts require the global economy to contract by the same amount.

No one attending COP15 Copenhagen would ever dare entertain the idea of a shrinking economy: there’s no profit in it, and who the hell would vote for it when we have all been told the most important thing we can have is a healthy fiscal system? More importantly, the corporations that run the industrial world will simply not allow it to happen; so it won’t.